According to a press release:
Responding to the requests of constituents who are seeking justice and their day in court for decades-old acts of sexual abuse, state Sen. Mary Ann Handley (D-Manchester) and state Rep. Beth Bye (D-West Hartford) today unveiled a bill designed to eliminate the statute of limitations in civil cases stemming from child sexual abuse, exploitation or assault.
Legislators absolutely love the opportunity to leverage off of the paranoia over child sex abuse because nothing sells quite so quickly with less examination than a proposed law that “protects children” from the horrors of child abuse, real or imagined. Are adults in Connecticut being unfairly denied their day in court due to an unrealistically short statute of limitations? Not exactly.
The purpose of the bill is to eliminate the civil lawsuit ‘clock’ that begins ticking at age 18 in cases involving the sexual assault, abuse or exploitation of a minor. Individuals have 30 years—until age 48—to file a civil lawsuit, or they lose their chance to achieve justice in a court of law.
So as the law currently stands, someone who was sexually abused as a child has until they are 48 years old to file suit. My guess is that law makers there have already capitalized off the sex hysteria to get it stretched out that long. 30 years is not just a bit excessive. It’s fucking preposterous.
The press release goes on to mention two specific cases that supposedly demonstrate the need for elimination of the time limit. Of course, if a statute of limitations could be eliminated on the basis a of one or two cases of someone who missed the boat, there would be no such limits for any crime.
Blogger and civil rights lawyer Norm Pattis critiques the bill further, with an eye toward the potential mischief from those who still support the largely discredited recovered (aka repressed) memory syndrome, where someone recalls trauma (usually sex abuse) that supposedly happened decades earlier. Accusations based on recovered memory are as close as it gets to complete fabrication of a crime, but innocence rarely saves the accused from having their life utterly destroyed.